The proliferation of computing devices in modern society has challenged designers, developers, and testers of graphical user interfaces for the computing devices. For example, the competitive landscapes between manufacturers of computing devices, between providers of applications that run on computing devices, and between providers of services accessed through the computing devices have pushed designers, developers, and testers of graphical user interfaces to design, develop, and test graphical user interfaces as efficiently as possible without sacrificing quality.
Traditional processes for design, development, and testing of graphical user interfaces have not kept pace with the demands placed on the designers, developers, and testers of the graphical user interfaces. To illustrate, in a traditional design and development process, a designer utilizes a graphical user interface design tool to design a screen layout of graphical elements to be included in a graphical user interface. Once the design is complete, the designer provides information about the screen layout of graphical elements to a developer who is responsible for producing computing code configured to be executed by a computing device to render a graphical user interface that includes the screen layout of graphical elements designed by the designer. The computing code produced by the developer is then typically provided to a tester for quality assurance testing. The tester is responsible for testing the computing code to ensure that the graphical user interface functions as intended.
Unfortunately, testing tools and methodologies traditionally available to a tester of conventional graphical user interface code require significant manual labor by the tester, are often less effective (e.g., prone to human error), and/or require significant resources and expense. For instance, conventional graphical user interface code does not provide an integrated testing framework that can be leveraged to facilitate effective and efficient testing of the GUI provided by the code. Consequently, the tester must expend time and resources to create testing tools capable of interfacing with conventional graphical user interface code. Such conventional testing tools are limited in how they can interface with the graphical user interface code, and this limitation has resulted in development of rudimentary and/or less effective testing tools. For example, a common testing methodology requires that the tester manually provide input to interact with the graphical user interface code, view a display of a graphical user interface provided in response to the interaction, and analyze the display to identify any perceived error. Such reliance on manual input and analysis by a tester is labor intensive and creates significant opportunity for human error.